"We apologize unreservedly for this lapse and the anguish and distress that has been caused....It was wrong to publish the cartoon in its original form.”

The fact-based cartoon has been retracted

Sydney, Australia — An influential Australian newspaper, the Sydney Morning Herald, has retracted and said it was "wrong" to publish a July 26 cartoon about Gaza that ignited howls of outrage from Zionists. In an August 3 editorial, the Herald denounced its own cartoon, saying that it "invoked an inappropriate element of religion, rather than nationhood, and made a serious error of judgment.” The cartoon, by Glen Le Lievre, depicted "an elderly man, with a large nose, sitting alone, with a remote control device in his hand, overseeing explosions in Gaza," according to the newspaper. His armchair had a Star of David on it, "and the man was wearing a kippah, a religious skullcap.”

Initially, the newspaper defended the cartoon, explaining that Le Lievre's drawing was inspired by "news photographs of men seated in chairs and lounges, observing the shelling of Gaza.”

The Herald’s initial defense was correct. As Harriet Sherwood reports (below), Israelis did indeed gather on hillsides to watch and cheer as their military dropped bombs on Gaza: "Israelis drank, snacked and posed for selfies" against a background of explosions in civilian areas.

Kippah-wearing Israelis occupy front row seats on a hill in Sderot as they enjoy the bombing of Gaza

Israelis lounge and drink as they watch Gaza being devastated by their nation’s military

____________________

Israelis gather on hillsides to watch and cheer as military drops bombs on Gaza

People drink, snack and pose for selfies against a background of explosions as Palestinian death toll mounts in ongoing offensive.

As the sun begins to sink over the Mediterranean, groups of Israelis gather each evening on hilltops close to the Gaza border to cheer, whoop and whistle as bombs rain down on people in a hellish warzone a few miles away.

Old sofas, garden chairs, battered car seats and upturned crates provide seating for the spectators. On one hilltop, a swing has been attached to the branches of a pine tree, allowing its occupant to sway gently in the breeze. Some bring bottles of beer or soft drinks and snacks.

On Saturday, a group of men huddle around a shisha pipe. Nearly all hold up smartphones to record the explosions or to pose grinning, perhaps with thumbs up, for selfies against a backdrop of black smoke.

Despite reports that millions of Israelis are living in terror of Hamas rockets, they don't deter these hilltop war watchers whose proximity to Gaza puts them within range of the most rudimentary missiles. Some bring their children.

In the border town of Sderot, which has been struck by countless missiles from the Gaza Strip in recent years, one family gathers on a top-floor balcony, draped with an Israeli flag and banner of the army's legendary Golani Brigade. A house with a war view may even command a premium price these days.

An atmosphere of anticipatory excitement grows as dusk falls, in the expectation that Hamas militants will increase rocket fire after breaking their Ramadan fast, and the Israeli military will respond with force.

The thud of shellfire, flash of an explosion and pall of smoke are greeted with exclamations of approval. "What a beauty," says one appreciative spectator.

Shimrit Peretz, 19, has come with her off-duty soldier boyfriend, Raz Sason, whose army-issue assault rifle is slung across his shoulders. "We come to look at the bombing," Peretz says, adding that this is their fourth visit to the hilltop. They plan to stay several hours: "It's interesting." The pair have brought a backpack filled with bottles of water and bags of crisps... (end quote from Harriet Sherwood, The Guardian).

______________________

Why is it wrong to satirize, in a cartoon, an actual occurrence that is now part of the history of the Gaza war — the heartless contempt which many Israelis have exhibited for the lives of Palestinian civilians? This is reality. Why can’t Israeli partisans stomach reality? Why must the supposedly secular and independent media of Australia bow to the demands of nationalist and religious-fanatic reality-deniers, who find truth highly offensive to their tender sensibilities and raging egotism?

The Sydney Morning Herald's editor, Darren Goodsir, told the Guardian Australia that he decided to apologize "after a long 10 days of serious thinking, and reflection.” What he actually means to say is, ten long days of constant pressure and hectoring from the Zionist lobby.

The New South Wales Jewish Board of Deputies complained to the Herald about the cartoon as follows: “In our view this is racial vilification, not only in the sense of offending, insulting, humiliating and intimidating Jews as a group, but also in the sense of inciting third parties to hatred of Jews,” according to Israeli newspaper Haaretz.

Dear "Jewish Board of Deputies”— if you feel “humiliated,” perhaps it’s because what your fellow tribesmen in the Israeli state did is indeed shameful and disgraceful. Rather than trying to censor reality, why not change your ways and become better persons, by moderating your hatred and contempt for Arab goyim? Everyone benefits from the self-reflection that comes from truth-based criticism.

The Australian Jewish News even took offense that the columnist had praised Judaic culture as liberal and scholarly, while invoking the "Six Million Holocaust." Australian Jewish News wrote,"Not only were we treated to baseless accusations of 'genocide' and 'ethnic cleansing' on Israel’s part, but then there was a subtle shift. These were crimes being committed by 'a people with a proud liberal tradition of scholarship and culture, who hold the Warsaw Ghetto and the six million dead of the Holocaust at the centre of their race memory.’ "This column was no longer about a country, this was about a people and a race – a people and a race who should know better because of what they themselves went through. In short, you Jews are the same as the Nazis, worse perhaps because you choose to ignore the lessons of your own history.”

“...a people and a race who should know better because of what they themselves went through.” Exactly!

Mike Carlton, former columnist for the Sydney Morning Herald

Carlton stood by his column and wrote about the attack on and his family on Twitter. The lives of Carlton's children were threatened and he was eventually suspended by the Sydney Morning Herald. Mr. Carlton has since resigned from the paper (see the story here). His e-mail account has been hacked. You can reach him via Twitter: @MikeCarlton01 Here is Carlton’s offending column:

Israel's rank and rotten fruit is being called fascism

By Mike Carlton

Sydney Morning Herald • July 26, 2014

The images from Gaza are searing, a gallery of death and horror. A dishevelled Palestinian man cries out in agony, his blood-soaked little brother dead in his arms. On a filthy hospital bed a boy of perhaps five or six screams for his father, his head and body lacerated by shrapnel. A teenage girl lies on a torn stretcher, her limbs awry, her face and torso blackened like a burnt steak. Mourners weep over a family of 18 men, women and children laid side by side in bloodied shrouds. Four boys of a fishing family named Bakr, all less than 12 years old, are killed on a beach by rockets from Israeli aircraft.

As I write, after just over a week of this invasion, the death toll of Palestinians is climbing towards 1000. Most are civilians, many are children. Assaulting Gaza by land, air and sea, Israel has destroyed homes and reduced entire city blocks to rubble. It has attacked schools, mosques and hospitals. Tens of thousands of people have fled, although there is nowhere safe for them to go in this wretched strip of land just 40 kilometres long and about 10 kilometres wide. There are desperate shortages of food and water, of medical and surgical supplies.

In an open letter to US President Barack Obama, Dr Mads Gilbert, a Norwegian surgeon working at Gaza's al-Shifa hospital, writes of "the incomprehensible chaos of bodies, sizes, limbs, walking, not walking, breathing, not breathing, bleeding, not bleeding humans. Humans!

"Ashy grey faces – Oh no! Not one more load of tens of maimed and bleeding. We still have lakes of blood on the floor in the emergency room, piles of dripping, blood-soaked bandages to clear out ... the cleaners, everywhere, swiftly shovelling the blood and discarded tissues, hair, clothes, cannulas – the leftovers from death – all taken away... to be prepared again, to be repeated all over.”

The onslaught is indiscriminate and unrelenting, with but one possible conclusion: Israel is not fighting the terrorists of Hamas. In defiance of the laws of war and the norms of civilised behaviour, it is waging its own war of terror on the entire Gaza population of about 1.7 million people. Call it genocide, call it ethnic cleansing: the aim is to kill Arabs.

As none other than Malcolm Fraser tweeted this week: "If any other country went to war killing as many civilians, women and children, it would be named a war crime." But it is not, although the UN is asking the question of both sides.

Yes, Hamas is also trying to kill Israeli civilians, with a barrage of rockets and guerilla border attacks. It, too, is guilty of terror and grave war crimes. But Israeli citizens and their homes and towns have been effectively shielded by the nation's Iron Dome defencs system, and so far only three of its civilians have died in this latest conflict. The Israeli response has been out of all proportion, a monstrous distortion of the much-vaunted right of self defense.

It is a breathtaking irony that these atrocities can be committed by a people with a proud liberal tradition of scholarship and culture, who hold the Warsaw Ghetto and the six million dead of the Holocaust at the centre of their race memory. But this is a new and brutal Israel dominated by the hardline, right-wing Likud Party of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his coalition.

As one observer puts it: "All the seeds of the incitement of the past few years, all the nationalistic, racist legislation and the incendiary propaganda, the scare campaigns and the subversion of democracy by the right-wing camp – all these have borne fruit, and that fruit is rank and rotten. The nationalist right has now sunk to a new level, with almost the whole country following in its wake. The word 'fascism', which I try to use as little as possible, finally has its deserved place in the Israeli political discourse.”

Fascism in Israel? At this point the Australian Likudniks, as Bob Carr calls them, will be lunging for their keyboards. There will be the customary torrent of abusive emails calling me a Nazi, an anti-Semite, a Holocaust denier, an ignoramus. As usual they will demand my resignation, my sacking. As it's been before, some of this will be pornographic or threatening violence.

In fact, that paragraph within the quotation marks was written by an Israeli. Gideon Levy is a columnist and editorial board member of the daily newspaper Ha’aretz. Born in Tel Aviv to parents who fled the Nazi occupation of Czechoslovakia in 1939, he despairs of what his country has become and the catastrophe its armed forces are visiting upon Gaza. After a recent column calling on Israeli pilots to stop bombing and rocketing civilians, his life was threatened and he now has a bodyguard day and night. It has come to that. In the worst insult of all, Levy is branded "a self-hating Jew”.

Israeli propaganda is subtle and skillfully put. "If Israel were to lay down its arms tomorrow, she would be destroyed; but if Hamas were to lay down their arms, there would be peace," goes the line, parroted endlessly.

But in all these long and agonising decades, Israel has never offered the Palestinians a just and equitable peace. They would have only a splintered, vassal state, their polity and economy and even their borders and freedom of travel and trade managed and determined by Israel. The occupation of Palestinian lands would remain with the relentless expansion of illegal Israeli settlements on the West Bank of the Jordan and the Dead Sea.

As the Palestine Liberation Organisation official Hanan Ashrawi put it this week in a television interview with the Australian journalist Hamish Macdonald: "No nation can accept being imprisoned, being besieged by land, by air, by sea and deprived of the most basic requirements of a decent life: freedom of movement, clean water. For seven years they have been under a brutal and lethal Israeli siege ... You shell them and you bomb them; you destroy homes, you destroy whole neighborhoods. You obliterate, annihilate, whole families, and then you come and say that this is self defense?"
That is why the killing and the dying goes on. Ad nauseam, ad infinitum. And the rest of the world, not caring, looks away. (End quote).

EDITORIAL (Sydney Morning Herald - Excerpt) Aug. 3 2014

There has been widespread reader and community reaction during the past 10 days over a cartoon that was used to illustrate an opinion piece by columnist Mike Carlton on the conflict in Gaza.

Much of that concern was borne out publicly on our letters pages – and there has continued to be commentary and correspondence that has sought to make sense of the conflict. The Herald has drawn opinions from a wide variety of sources to help readers to understand the causes of, and the possible ways to end, the war between Hamas and Israel. Deeply critical exchanges have taken place over the opinions expressed in Mr Carlton's column, and properly so, as we invite debate over any column we publish. But the Herald has also fielded a number of accusations of racism over the cartoon.

...The Herald deeply regretted the upset the image had caused, but felt – not least because the cartoonist lacked any intent and thatactual photographs influenced the setting and physical depiction of the character in the cartoon – that no racial vilification had occurred.However, this newspaper accepts that this position was too simplistic and ignored the use of religious symbols. The Herald now appreciates that, in using the Star of David and the kippah in the cartoon, the newspaper invoked an inappropriate element of religion, rather than nationhood, and made a serious error of judgment. It was wrong to publish the cartoon in its original form. We apologize unreservedly for this lapse, and the anguish and distress that has been caused. Our commitment remains to reporting in a fair and balanced way on the appalling events in Israel and Gaza, where our correspondent, Ruth Pollard, is currently based, witnessing daily the horrors of war....
(End quote; emphasis supplied).

In other words, God forbid that anyone should reach conclusions about fundamentalist Judaism which reporters, academics and pundits regularly draw about fundamentalist Islam. There is one religion on earth that must not, and indeed, in the old media, cannot be criticized, or exposed for fostering barbarism and racism. It has been said before, but it bears repeating — find out who you can’t criticize and you will know who it is that rules over you.

Monday, August 04, 2014

Amid all the horrors unfolding in the latest Israeli offensive in Gaza, Israel's goal is simple: quiet-for-quiet, a return to the norm. For the West Bank, the norm is that Israel continues its illegal construction of settlements and infrastructure so that it can integrate into Israel whatever might be of value, meanwhile consigning Palestinians to unviable cantons and subjecting them to repression and violence. For Gaza, the norm is a miserable existence under a cruel and destructive siege that Israel administers to permit bare survival but nothing more.

The latest Israeli rampage was set off by the brutal murder of three Israeli boys from a settler community in the occupied West Bank. A month before, two Palestinian boys were shot dead in the West Bank city of Ramallah. That elicited little attention, which is understandable, since it is routine. "The institutionalized disregard for Palestinian life in the West helps explain not only why Palestinians resort to violence," Middle East analyst Mouin Rabbani reports, "but also Israel's latest assault on the Gaza Strip.”

In an interview, human rights lawyer Raji Sourani, who has remained in Gaza through years of Israeli brutality and terror, said, "The most common sentence I heard when people began to talk about cease-fire: Everybody says it's better for all of us to die and not go back to the situation we used to have before this war. We don't want that again. We have no dignity, no pride; we are just soft targets, and we are very cheap. Either this situation really improves or it is better to just die. I am talking about intellectuals, academics, ordinary people: Everybody is saying that.”

In January 2006, Palestinians committed a major “crime": They voted the wrong way in a carefully monitored free election, handing control of Parliament to Hamas. The media constantly intone that Hamas is dedicated to the destruction of Israel. In reality, Hamas leaders have repeatedly made it clear that Hamas would accept a two-state settlement in accord with the international consensus that has been blocked by the U.S. and Israel for 40 years. In contrast, Israel is dedicated to the destruction of Palestine, apart from some occasional meaningless words, and is implementing that commitment. The crime of the Palestinians in January 2006 was punished at once. The U.S. and Israel, with Europe shamefully trailing behind, imposed harsh sanctions on the errant population and Israel stepped up its violence.

The U.S. and Israel quickly initiated plans for a military coup to overthrow the elected government. When Hamas had the effrontery to foil the plans, the Israeli assaults and the siege became far more severe.

There should be no need to review again the dismal record since. The relentless siege and savage attacks are punctuated by episodes of "mowing the lawn," to borrow Israel's cheery expression for its periodic exercises in shooting fish in a pond as part of what it calls a "war of defense.” Once the lawn is mowed and the desperate population seeks to rebuild somehow from the devastation and the murders, there is a cease-fire agreement. The most recent cease-fire was established after Israel's October 2012 assault, called Operation Pillar of Defense.

Though Israel maintained its siege, Hamas observed the cease-fire, as Israel concedes. Matters changed in April of this year when Fatah and Hamas forged a unity agreement that established a new government of technocrats unaffiliated with either party. Israel was naturally furious, all the more so when even the Obama administration joined the West in signaling approval. The unity agreement not only undercuts Israel's claim that it cannot negotiate with a divided Palestine but also threatens the long-term goal of dividing Gaza from the West Bank and pursuing its destructive policies in both regions. Something had to be done, and an occasion arose on June 12, when the three Israeli boys were murdered in the West Bank. Early on, the Netanyahu government knew that they were dead, but pretended otherwise, which provided the opportunity to launch a rampage in the West Bank, targeting Hamas. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu claimed to have certain knowledge that Hamas was responsible. That too was a lie.

One of Israel's leading authorities on Hamas, Shlomi Eldar, reported almost at once that the killers very likely came from a dissident clan in Hebron that has long been a thorn in the side of Hamas. Eldar added that "I'm sure they didn't get any green light from the leadership of Hamas, they just thought it was the right time to act.”

The 18-day Israeli rampage after the kidnapping, however, succeeded in undermining the feared Palestinian unity government, and sharply increasing Israeli repression. Israel also conducted dozens of attacks in Gaza, killing five Hamas members on July 7. Hamas finally reacted with its first rockets in 19 months, providing Israel with the pretext for Operation Protective Edge on July 8.

By July 31, around 1,400 Palestinians had been killed, mostly civilians, including hundreds of women and children. And three Israeli civilians. Large areas of Gaza had been turned into rubble. Four hospitals had been attacked, each another war crime.

Israeli officials laud the humanity of what it calls "the most moral army in the world," which informs residents that their homes will be bombed. The practice is "sadism, sanctimoniously disguising itself as mercy," in the words of Israeli journalist Amira Hass: "A recorded message demanding hundreds of thousands of people leave their already targeted homes, for another place, equally dangerous, 10 kilometers away.” In fact, there is no place in the prison of Gaza safe from Israeli sadism, which may even exceed the terrible crimes of Operation Cast Lead in 2008-2009.

The hideous revelations elicited the usual reaction from the most moral president in the world, Barack Obama: great sympathy for Israelis, bitter condemnation of Hamas and calls for moderation on both sides. When the current attacks are called off, Israel hopes to be free to pursue its criminal policies in the occupied territories without interference, and with the U.S. support it has enjoyed in the past. Gazans will be free to return to the norm in their Israeli-run prison, while in the West Bank, Palestinians can watch in peace as Israel dismantles what remains of their possessions.

That is the likely outcome if the U.S. maintains its decisive and virtually unilateral support for Israeli crimes and its rejection of the long-standing international consensus on diplomatic settlement. But the future will be quite different if the U.S. withdraws that support.

In that case it would be possible to move toward the "enduring solution" in Gaza that U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry called for, eliciting hysterical condemnation in Israel because the phrase could be interpreted as calling for an end to Israel's siege and regular attacks. And - horror of horrors - the phrase might even be interpreted as calling for implementation of international law in the rest of the occupied territories.

Forty years ago Israel made the fateful decision to choose expansion over security, rejecting a full peace treaty offered by Egypt in return for evacuation from the occupied Egyptian Sinai, where Israel was initiating extensive settlement and development projects. Israel has adhered to that policy ever since.

If the U.S. decided to join the world, the impact would be great. Over and over, Israel has abandoned cherished plans when Washington has so demanded. Such are the relations of power between them. Furthermore, Israel by now has little recourse, after having adopted policies that turned it from a country that was greatly admired to one that is feared and despised, policies it is pursuing with blind determination today in its march toward moral deterioration and possible ultimate destruction.

Could U.S. policy change? It's not impossible. Public opinion has shifted considerably in recent years, particularly among the young, and it cannot be completely ignored. For some years there has been a good basis for public demands that Washington observe its own laws and cut off military aid to Israel. U.S. law requires that "no security assistance may be provided to any country the government of which engages in a consistent pattern of gross violations of internationally recognized human rights.” Israel most certainly is guilty of this consistent pattern, and has been for many years. Sen. Patrick Leahy of Vermont, author of this provision of the law, has brought up its potential applicability to Israel in specific cases, and with a well-conducted educational, organizational and activist effort such initiatives could be pursued successively. That could have a very significant impact in itself, while also providing a springboard for further actions to compel Washington to become part of "the international community" and to observe international law and norms. Nothing could be more significant for the tragic Palestinian victims of many years of violence and repression.

_______Dr. Chomsky is Institute Professor of Linguistics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The emphases in this article have been supplied._______

Some quotes from Mr. Scott McConnell, founding editor of TheAmerican Conservative magazine (the publication which has banned advertising for our book Usury in Christendom), July-August 2014, pp. 22 and 24:

“(William F.) Buckley is rightly credited with pushing hardcore anti-Semitism out of the American right. As recently as the 1950s, it was widespread on the right: one of the most popular conservative books of that decade was The Iron Curtain Over America, which purported to describe how Khazar Jews were taking over the Democratic Party. It went through 14 printings. National Review (Buckley’s magazine), founded in 1955, sought to break from this kind of nuttiness.”

Mr. McConnell’s words remind us of a statement by Mr. Buckley’s son, Christopher, that Gore Vidal had the “tiresome” habit of saying that President Franklin Roosevelt had foreknowledge of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.

Imperial personalities write this way. No data need be advanced concerning what makes The Iron Curtain Over America qualify as being both the epitome of “nuttiness” and "hardcore anti-Semitism.” Mr. McConnell says it is so and that’s all “Conservatives" need to know.

Christopher Buckley finds the idea that FDR let Pearl Harbor be bombed, “tiresome.” My, my, old boy, so sorry to have disturbed your cocktail hour with the thought of it. Let’s dismiss all historical revisionism when we find it tiresome. Truth can be a bit of bore, you know.

Those are strong words about a dead man known for his nobility of soul and coming from a magazine that claims to be independent of the Israeli (if not the Talmudic) agenda. May we trouble Mr. McConnell for the slightest evidence of Joe’s indefensibility? No such luck. We’re just supposed to believe it because the "founding editor” has decreed it.

The same issue of the magazine contains an undistinguished essay by Samuel Goldman, “What Would Jeremiah Do?,” the publication of which seems intended to show that TheAmerican Conservative is not “anti-Semitic.” On p. 29 Mr. Goldman quotes from the erstwhile Chief Rabbi of England, Jonathan Sacks, who is on record applauding the Talmudic claim that the rabbis defeated God and God admitted it. The author doesn’t mention that part of Sacks’ writing. Rather, he advertises the rabbi’s supposed unique insights into the Book of Jeremiah.

Mr. Goldman goes on to state, “At least in the diaspora, Jews have demanded to live as Jews — but not the imposition of Jewish law or practices on others.”

Really, Mr. Goldman? If that is the case why is so much of my food here in the U.S. marked with a small letter “K” or a letter “U” inside a circle, representative of the fact that my victuals have been blessed by a rabbi, rendering it kashrut (kosher)? Consumers pay the rabbis for this privilege. It’s a hidden tax on our food.

The freedom to abort unborn children in America is in accordance with rabbinic halacha, which determines that an unborn child may be killed at any time in the womb, if it is determined that it is a rodef (“pursuer”) — a baby seeking to kill its mother. Talk about nuttiness!

What of the activist Supreme Court justices who make law by judicial decision? This is a traditional form of Talmudic legislation.

Why is the U.S. Congress occupied Israeli territory?

Why do I see a Chanukah menorah on Union Square in San Francisco in December, but no Nativity Scene?

The Talmudic Noahide Laws (these have no connection to the Biblical Noah), have been enshrined in Federal Law as part of "Education Day USA.” One of those laws provides for the execution of idolaters. Rabbi Maimonides, a hallowed halachic authority for Ashkenazi Judaism, defined idolater as one who worships Jesus Christ as God.

How is it that I am likely to lose my employment and my reputation if I object to Orthodox Judaism with the same zeal that tens of thousands of pundits, preachers, priests and politicians object to Islam?

Mr. Goldman’s amusing writing serves as a means for the frightened editors at TheAmerican Conservative magazine to point to when they themselves are accused of the perpetual charge of anti-Semitism. They can reply, “No we’re not — we smeared Sobran, and held Samuel Goldman and Rabbi Sacks aloft. How can we be anti-Semites?”

There is now an extremist, racist ideological current in Israel that not only justifies the recent onslaught on the Gaza Strip, but actually encourages the use of enormous and disproportionate violence against civilians, which has led to the extermination of entire families.

A Palestinian father mourns his son who was killed Aug. 3 in the Israeli bombing of a United Nation shelter for civilians in Rafah.

A Palestinian father comforts his son after their relative was killed in the Israeli bombing of a United Nations shelter for Palestinians in Rafah, Aug. 3.

RAMALLAH, WEST BANK — Centuries of European colonialism have provided the world with certain basic lessons about subjugating colonized peoples: The longer any colonial occupation endures, the greater the settlers’ racism and extremism tends to grow. This is especially true if the occupiers encounter resistance; at that point, the occupied population becomes an obstacle that must either be forced to submit or removed through expulsion or murder.In the eyes of an occupying power, the humanity of those under its thumb depends on the degree of their submission to, or collaboration with, the occupation. If the occupied population chooses to stand in the way of the occupier’s goals, then they are demonized, which allows the occupier the supposed moral excuse of confronting them with all possible means, no matter how harsh.The Israeli occupation of Palestine is one of the only remaining settler-colonial occupations in the world today.And it is not limited to East Jerusalem and the West Bank: Although Israel withdrew its settlers and army from Gaza in 2005, it is still recognized by the United Nations as an occupying power, due to its complete control of Gaza’s airspace, sea access and of almost all of its land borders.Over the years, Israel has used all forms of pressure to prevent the Palestinians from achieving their national rights and gaining independence. It hasn’t been enough for Israelis to believe their own claims about Palestinians; they have sought incessantly to impose this narrative on the world and to have it adopted by their Western allies.Unsurprisingly, all of this has led to complete shamelessness in mainstream Israeli rhetoric about Palestinians. After all, if one is not held accountable, then one has the freedom to think — and do — what one wants. With no internal or external checks, one can act with impunity.The Israeli left is a relic, all but extinct, and the extremist right is entrenched in the Israeli political establishment. Attacking the Palestinians has become officially sanctioned policy, embedded in Israeli public consciousness and politely ignored in Western political circles.There is now an extremist, racist ideological current in Israel that not only justifies the recent onslaught on the Gaza Strip, but actually encourages the use of enormous and disproportionate violence against civilians, which has led to the extermination of entire families.Moshe Feiglin, deputy speaker of the Knesset, recently called on the Israeli army to attack and occupy Gaza, paying no heed to anything but the safety of Israeli soldiers. He then demanded that Gaza be annexed to Israel, and asked the army to use all means at its disposal to “conquer” Gaza, by which he meant that obedient Palestinians would be allowed to stay, while the rest — the majority — should be exiled to the Sinai Peninsula. This cannot be understood as anything less than a call for ethnic cleansing.Ayelet Shaked, a Knesset member for the Jewish Home Party, a member of the governing coalition, called on the Israeli army to destroy the homes of terrorist “snakes,” and to murder their mothers as well, so that they would not be able to bring “little snakes” into the world.And Mordechai Kedar, a professor at Bar Ilan University, publicly suggested that raping the mothers and sisters of “terrorists” might deter further terrorism. * The university did not take any measures against him.Such statements are no longer isolated incidents, but reflective of the general sentiment within a country where chants of “Kill the Arabs” are increasingly common. It is no longer an aberration to hear these opinions expressed in public, or by politicians and academics. What is unexpected — and unacceptable — is that such statements are not met with any sort of condemnation in official Western circles that claim to oppose racism and extremism.The rise in Israeli racism and extremism against Palestinians would not have happened without the unconditional support that Israel receives from its allies, most significantly the United States.Israel cannot continue to be the exception to the rule of international law and human rights. The international community must hold it accountable for its rhetoric and its actions, and begin to treat it like all other countries. It should not be allowed to continue to enjoy its state of exceptionalism and to use this to wreak destruction on the Palestinian people.After 47 years of occupation, two decades of stalled peace talks and almost eight years of a strangulating siege of the Gaza Strip, the international community must demand that Israel clearly state what it intends to do with its occupation of the Palestinian people.Since the Palestinians are not the occupiers, but rather those living under occupation, this question cannot be asked of them.If Israel wants to continue its occupation and hinder Palestinians’ path to freedom and independence, then it should be aware that the Palestinian people will continue to resist with all the means at their disposal. If Israel intends to end the occupation, then it will find that the Palestinians are more than ready for an agreement.What the Palestinians are enduring today in Gaza should be a clarion call for the entire world to end the bloodshed. But it will take more than a cease-fire. It will take peace. And peace cannot happen without an end to the occupation.

Aftermath of the Israeli bombing of a neighborhood in Gaza, August, 2014* This is the first mention in the NY Times of Israeli Prof. Kedar’s repulsive “rape the Palestinians” remarks, since his views were first reported July 22 by independent news pages online. His despicable observation deserves a full report and exposé in the Times, not just a passing reference buried in the eleventh paragraph of an Op-Ed. On July 13, the Times gave massive, front page coverage to a rape that was said to have occurred at a small upstate NY college, and then published two more follow-up reports about it. The Times claims to be deeply concerned about a culture of rape on American college campuses, but took 13 days to even mention (much less report) the Israeli professor who teaches at a heralded Talmudic university, who publicly states on Israeli radio that raping Palestinian women is the only effective deterrent against Palestinian armed resistance. However, let the record show that the article by Jarbawi mentioning Kedar was not published in the print edition of the New York Times distributed in the U.S. It was published only online and in the printed International edition. It was omitted from the US print edition, which still has the majority of the readers of the Times, who will not see even a passing mention of the outrageous Israeli rape-as-a-deterrent doctrine.

_____________

Addendum: “People cannot flee from Gaza; Israel and Egypt keeps their borders virtually sealed. Residents can flee their neighborhoods, but even United Nations schools being used as shelters in Gaza have come under deadly fire. And in downtown Gaza City, where Israel has urged people to go for safety, Israeli airstrikes have repeatedly hit apartment buildings packed with residents and refugees. One strike collapsed most of a building and killed the family of a bank employee who had moved to Gaza City because of Israeli instructions.” — Anne Barnard, NY Times online August 4, 2014"If the Israelis had slaughtered as many animals in the San Diego Zoo as they killed Palestinian civilians in July and August, Americans would be up in arms in rage and protest.” — Michael Hoffman

Saturday, August 02, 2014

Richard Gage, founder of Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth. Approx. 40 minutes. The crucially important science behind the US government’s September 11, 2001 conspiracy is discussed in this interview.

Friday, August 01, 2014

As the incremental Israeli genocide of the Palestinians proceeds apace, with approximately 1600 Palestinians killed since July 6, in a massacre codenamed Operation Protective Edge, the old media continue to parrot the old alibis for Israeli mass murder. Case in point — the cadaverous Bob Schieffer, host of CBS’s “Face the Nation” television “news” program.

Mr. Schieffer closed the program on Sunday with a disgusting quote from Golda Meir, former Israeli Prime Minister, who was the subject of a fawning 2003 New York stage play (Golda’s Balcony”).

Bob Schieffer, on “Face the Nation”July 27:

In the Middle East, the Palestinian people find themselves in the grip of a terrorist group that has embarked on a strategy to get its own children killed in order to build sympathy for its cause — a strategy that might actually be working, at least in some quarters. Last week, I found a quote of many years ago by Golda Meir, one of Israel's early leaders, which might have been said yesterday. "We can forgive the Arabs for killing our children," she said. "But we can never forgive them for forcing us to kill their children."

Meir made her statement in order to contrast “noble, life-loving Jewish parents” and allegedly evil, murderous Palestinian parents. This statement of hers is supposed the reflect the profound Talmudic wisdom and irony of the “Sages.”

What Schieffer and the legion of Zionist toadies employed at all levels of the corporate American media seem to forget, is that the Palestinians are “in the grip” of Israeli state terror and if the Israelis don’t want to kill Palestinian kids, they don’t have to. They can stop killing them and grant them their human rights, including the return of their stolen land, and the return of refugees expelled by force and the threat of force.

To put the blame for the murder of Palestinian children on the victims themselves is the ultimate exercise in depraved Judaic supremacist logic (endorsed by CBS News), which holds that Israeli persons are always warm-hearted, compassionate and caring, while anyone who dares to oppose them is the scum of the earth. Israelis bear no responsibility for the slaughter of Palestinians. It’s all the fault of Hamas.

This is the fairy tale about the war in Gaza which CBS News is hoping we'll believe. Sorry Mr. Schieffer, I have access to new media, and using the Twitter hash tag #GazaUnderAttack I can find more of the truth about Israeli war crimes and anti-Arab bigotry in five minutes, than I could if I watched 50 hours of your geriatric journey down propaganda's memory lane.

Hoffman is a former reporter for the New York bureau of the Associated Press.